


Stop the Presses

by Neftzer_nettlestonenell



Series: We Are 2011 [8]
Category: As Time Goes By, Robin Hood (BBC 2006)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Comedy, Crack, Drama, Fluff and Crack, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 11:28:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13680771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neftzer_nettlestonenell/pseuds/Neftzer_nettlestonenell
Summary: Guy takes yet another step toward his redemption. Or at least tries to.





	Stop the Presses

**Knightsbridge, LONDON -**  It was not a rich flat, though admirably chic in its decoration. The mihrab, once ignorantly affixed to the wall facing Scotland, had been re-hung on the correct, qibla wall to Mecca. 

He watched her cleaning her teeth from his vantage point of sitting propped up by pillows in her bed. He had turned the telly off, though he knew it drove her crazy; that he would not sit and idly watch it in bed of a morning...or an evening.

"I have watched decades of television," he had tried to explain. "More hours--years, even, of shows than you could possibly imagine. I am through with it." His voice was edged with the sort of patient boredom he felt for the medium. But he shed that tone when he continued. "I would much rather watch you."

"If we both didn't know better," she had teased him, "I would be tempted to say you were trying at 'smooth operator', there." And she had laughed.

He had not known how much he could enjoy being the root cause of a person laughing. Not  _at_  him, but...about him. About his foibles. And he, likewise, about hers.

As she moved to begin blowing out her hair in her small flat's bathroom vanity mirror, he called out to her. "You ought best to floss, you know," reminding her, though she rarely complied with his suggestion.

She turned toward him, roller brush in one hand, blow dryer in the other. "And  _you_  ought best clean up after yourself." There was a decided twinkle of mischief brewing in her eye.

"Yes, about that," he began, his eyes momentarily downcast as he picked at the shantung coverlet. "Sorry. I should have asked before I had the boxes delivered here."

"It's not so much that I mind, Guy," she assured him. "I'm flattered, really, that you think of this as home--only...there  _are_  so many. We've lost access to the dining room altogether."

"Yes, well," he continued his apology with an explanation, "I had forgotten the relative bulk...of the manuscript." He scrubbed at his chin, sheepishness swimming in his eyes.

"Why did you need it back again?" she asked, "I mean, hadn't they scanned it into digital files or re-typed it into a word processing program or something?"

"Alistair sent those along as well. Only, they, of course, take up far less space...He  _had_  to send back everything. All part of dissolving the contract."

 

* * *

 

" _Giz_ -mo!" Alistair welcomed him to his office as effusively as ever he had.

Guy was yet again surprised to note that the publishing offices of Alistair's firm had never moved in literally hundreds of years. He never had to think twice, never ask directions, when he chose to pay them a call.

Thinking he knew what Guy wanted, Alistair launched into his usual, all-but-classic-by-now stall routine. "They're very keen on it, you know--now more than ever. Definitely want to publish. A big roll out, book tour, t-shirts, Twitter-Twitter-Twitter."

Guy raised his eyebrows waiting for the next bit.

"But they're wanting to wait  _just_  a tad longer, 'til this whole BBC lawsuit sort of..." he fluttered his hands, "fades from memory. Obviously better for you--for your ultimate vindication--to do so. But it will be a triumph, Mate." He feinted an arm punch. "Guaranteed. That's why they won't rush it. Won't put it out there before it--and its potential readership--are ready. Perfectly primed."

For some reason, unlike the many other times he had heard it, Guy failed to be outraged by being given the same old saw. "Your firm's had the completed manuscript going on thirty-five years now," he reminded the far-younger man opposite him.

Alistair looked at him, but reliably threw himself headlong into another high-octane, committed explanation.

Guy waved him off. "I'll be having it back now."

"Back? You want it back? The memoir?  _Your_  earth shattering first-person account of--of--of--"

"Yes. I've decided against publication."

"For now?"

"For ever."

"But you can't do that Giz! You can't do that to us-- _to me_! We've invested a lot of time in you--in edits, and re-writes! Cover art! Author photos--I have  seventeen amazing blurbs from top authors set for the back cover! Czeslaw Milocz, William Trevor, Annie Proulx! Don  _jiggering_  DeLillo, Mate! You can't pull out now! This was to be your big moment, your  _total_  worldwide exoneration! And you want to throw it all away?"

Guy looked at Alistair.

Alistair looked at Guy. His tone lost all its gush. His face all its animation. "There will be legal action, you know, Mate."

Guy gave his seldom-seen-of-late lopsided sneer. "I should very much enjoy watching you try to enforce--much less explain--a contract signed when Cromwell was in power."

Alistair sighed. He reached into his lowest desk drawer and withdrew a binder so dust-laden that when he set it on his blotter a cloud exploded off it like powder off a dropped puff. 

He produced a small card. "Fill that out, leave it with my assistant," he instructed Guy, his energy gone. "They'll deliver it to you, after they figure out how to retrieve it from our storage space in Kent."

 

* * *

 

Jumi had finished her hair, and moved on to her face. "Someone put together an abstract for it, you know. I ran across it when I knocked over a box while trying to grab a bowl for curry."

"Did they? Must've been one of his interns."

"They logged it in as more than 15,000 pages. Mostly hand-written. Only the last 2,000 or so banged out on a typewriter."

"Mmm. That sounds about accurate."

"But what I don't understand is--Acre. The abstract says there are 4,100 distinct renderings of that scene.  _That_  memory. Can you really see it so many different ways?"

"Oh," he did not think he could make her (or any person that had not been there) understand, but he gave it his best effort anyway, "I wrote those over years and years and years. It seemed very important at the time that I get the telling of it right. That I pore over it, study it. Be certain that I hadn't missed anything--any detail. The sharing of it, after all, was meant to be my absolution."

She turned away from the mirror and her eyelash curler, "So why, after putting all that to rest--why have it all sent back to you now? Why not let it rot, forgotten, in their archives? Or have them shred it into oblivion for you?"

He cleared his throat, straightened a little in the bed. Wished for a moment he had bothered to put his shirt on. "I awoke one night...here," his eyes took in his surroundings, "and it began to seem important that I have it on hand, in case someone in my life--not," he said haltingly, "not necessarily just you--might like to read it. To know my thoughts, what I contemplated on all those years. What it was that consumed me, in my own words. To have the chance to read it, and judge me for themselves. Perhaps someone like, I dunno--" He said it quickly so that it might die away before it caused too much of a hullabaloo, entered into too great a permanence. His head was lowered, but his eyes looked up as he spoke. "Like my descendants."

Somewhere in the middle of his speech she had stopped working on her makeup, instead had stood still, listening to him. "So," she asked, her tone smiling, "there is a future?"

"Yes." He smiled back. Stupidly, he thought. Yes, quite possibly stupidly. He found it bothered him not a bit. "There is a future."

**...The End...**


End file.
